MEPs from the largest political group in the European Parliament, the EPP (European People’s Party), have called for the deforestation law to be postponed. “We call on the Commission to immediately delay the implementation of the deforestation law,” said Herbert Dorfmann MEP and Peter Liese, spokespersons for the group in the Parliament’s agriculture and environment committees respectively. “Farmers, retailers, small and large businesses and Member State governments are deeply concerned about the jungle of implementing rules that will apply to different production sectors. This bureaucratic monster threatens the supply of animal feed and the trade in many consumer goods. The Commission must take the time it needs to resolve the many problems with the legislation,” demanded Dorfmann and Liese.
According to the EPP, if nothing is done, the new rules will come into force on 30 December 2024, aiming to stop the deforestation of forests for the production of soya, coffee, livestock and other products, but at the same time creating a huge bureaucracy for European companies, which in various sectors, including agriculture and forestry, have asked for the law to be postponed, saying they need more time to prepare the traceability and due diligence systems required by the legislation, and that they are still waiting for the Commission to produce a series of technical documents to guide them in implementation.
Specifically, the measure called Eudr (Regulation on Deforestation-free products), aims to prevent the entry into our markets of products that derive from the overexploitation of forest areas. Designed to combat climate change and stop the loss of biodiversity, the Eudr is however accused of being too stringent and of requiring bureaucratic burdens that put the bloc’s companies in difficulty, with possible impacts on over 110 billion dollars of annual trade, affecting the economies of the continents and requiring suppliers to adapt to Europe’s efforts to become more ecological.
